Intro to EXPGUI

What is EXPGUI?

EXPGUI is a graphical user interface (GUI) editor for
GSAS
experiment (.EXP) files and shell which allows all the other GSAS programs
to be executed with a GUI.
EXPGUI is not a replacement for the GSAS program EXPEDT.
EXPGUI can do at best 10% of what
EXPEDT can do -- but that 10% covers most of the
actions that I use frequently (and that I could code without a major effort).
EXPGUI is written in the
Tcl/Tk scripting language, so it is largely platform independent.

Much more than it can do. At this time, EXPGUI can't
change atom types.
It cannot create or edit soft constraints
or many types of hard constraints (other than atomic and profile constraints).
It cannot be used on
magnetic scattering parameters or on single-crystal histograms.
It does do most of the things that commonly used in Rietveld.

New features are planned for EXPGUI, but this depends on my
available free time. It should be noted that the GSAS EXPEDT program is
huge, so EXPGUI will never have all the features in EXPEDT.
I am glad to get suggestions for adding more functionality to EXPGUI
(see the
"wish list"). Coming up with
ideas for intuitive GUI additions
is often half the battle.

What type of computers will EXPGUI run on?

EXPGUI requires a working version of
Tcl/Tk, scripting language.
While that is somewhat restrictive,
it still means that EXPGUI will run on many more platforms than GSAS does.
Most of the development has been done in LINUX with some testing on SGI. It
also runs in Windows (-95 through -XP & -2003?) and in Mac OS X.
I expect that EXPGUI will run on all platforms
where GSAS does (except perhaps VMS).

The initial version of the GUI part of EXPGUI was created by
Jonathan Wasserman (thanks Jon!) Brian
Toby is irresponsible for the rest.

EXPGUI would be much more of use to me if....

Gee, you want to add some features... Great! You have all the
EXPGUI sources and
Tcl/Tk
is free. Oh, you want me to do it. Well, please
ask and I will try. In particular, I am looking for good ideas on
how to design GUI's for different aspects of experiment editing,
with an attractive, intuitive and compact layout.

Mailing List

If you would like to get news about EXPGUI, please send
Brian.Toby@ANL.GOV e-mail. The mailing list is not active at present, but
I hope to use it again to provide
information about updates and bug fixes.

A picture

Neither the author nor the U.S. Government makes any warranty, expressed
or implied, or assumes any liability or
responsibility for the use of this information or the software described
here. Brand names cited here are used for
identification purposes and do not constitute an endorsement by NIST.